


thinking outrageously i write in cursive

by Macremae



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1950s, Alternate Universe - Historical, Childhood Friends, Dead Poets Society AU, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Learning Disabilities, M/M, Mutual Pining, Period-Typical Homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-26
Updated: 2020-02-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:40:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22904137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Macremae/pseuds/Macremae
Summary: For the Newmann Historical Zine 2019.Politics, poetry, and a few of the other ways Hermann teaches Newt how to read. Nobody said boarding school would be this repressed, but then again, Welton is reported to lead the pack ineverything.
Relationships: Newton Geiszler/Hermann Gottlieb
Comments: 3
Kudos: 35
Collections: Somewhere in Time Zine





	thinking outrageously i write in cursive

**Author's Note:**

> we’re posting our works now!!! thank you so much to the whole team at the zine, and make sure to grab your copy online or when it comes out in print!!! check them out at @Newmann_HAU_zine

It begins like this: with their knees almost touching, their faces separated by centimeters, and something in the air that is inexplicable to two boys as young as themselves.

The clock on Newt’s bedside table reads three fifteen AM in the dim light of their dorm room, visible only by the flashlight casting harsh shadows on the chilly stone walls. He can just see Hermann’s fingers around the handle; long, slender, calluses where he holds a pencil, pale as milk in black and white. The nails are chewed down to the quick from stress, which, God knows the poor man has a lot of it these days. And not just because he’s taken up the herculean task of teaching Newt how to read.

They’re roommates, of course he would have discovered it eventually. Newt records all his classes with a little handheld device his uncle built for him back in grade school, and never does the readings, and his typewriter has been gathering dust in the corner of his desk since the start of the year. His own handwriting is far easier to read, he says, he knows what works.

Hermann replies that he’s hurtling towards arthritis at an early age, but Newt just shoots back that he always catches up to him in everything eventually. He knocks Newt’s shin with his cane, but there’s a smile as he does it.

Newt adjusts his glasses as they slip down his nose and strains to see the words swimming before him. “In—im—Imitate? No, wait, that’s wrong… intimate?”

Hermann makes a soft noise of affirmation, and Newt continues. “Intimate the hardness: jaw upon jaw, fo—forehead warm upon… forehead.” He glances up. “It’s ‘forehead’, right?”

Hermann smiles in response, his eyes large and sleepy at this late an hour. It’s a look Newt has burned into the back of his mind forever: hair mussed, large spectacles on, warm brown eyes focused solely on him in rapt attention that has nothing to do with proving him wrong. It’s a normal thing to do with one’s rival. Or, he supposes, partner in education at this point. Hermann teaches him reading and typing and tricks for sounding out words, and Newt beats the snot out of anyone who tries to take his cane. It’s mutually beneficial. One might even call it friendship.

“Okay,” Newt says, reading on. “Kisses quick as breaths, without—shit. Motherfuck. Shit.”

“Volition,” Hermann supplies helpfully. He’s very good about this, never giving Newt a word he knows he can work out on his own. There are some, however, that he struggles the most with: v and w, n and m, letters that blend together on the alphabet list. Newt pushes his finger to the next word.

“Love: I am luminous, careless as love’s breathing, f—fluoresc—cent glowing the fine warm veins and bones.” He pauses to swallow, mouth dry as Hermann’s shoulder almost brushes his. Selfishly, Newt moves a tenth of an inch closer, and their bodies tap like drumsticks counting off a beat. Hermann doesn’t move away.

“Your weight, the sky lovered suddenly.”

“Lowered,” Hermann corrects him. He puts his finger on the page and points out the “w”, pushing Newt’s aside. The area of skin where they touched burns like it’s covered in hot wax. 

“Oh,” says Newt, not-quite breathlessly. “Right, thanks.”

“Would you like to try a different one? The stanza structure here is a little difficult.”

“Yeah, sure,” he says, hoping that moving on to a new poem will prolong the lesson. “You pick.”

Hermann looks up in surprise at this. “You’re letting _me_ choose? Are you feeling alright?”

Newt grins brightly and shoves him with his side. “Shut up, man. I’m being nice for once, just enjoy it. Think of it as a… as a thank you.”

Hermann turns a funny shade of pink as he looks back down at the book, flipping through the pages deliberately. His hands are stark white against the yellowed paper, like snow falling over a low-hanging moon. Newt can’t tear his eyes away; he wonders if they would still be cold after holding his own for a long enough time. 

Hermann’s hands are clean, but Newt has known him long enough to tell when his mind is not. His eyes burn holes in the pages, smoking embers. He’s thinking of something.

“Here,” he says, landing on a poem by Whitman. “This one.”

Newt looks it over. It’s in prose, which is usually easy for him, but the language looks old enough to prove tricky. He swallows again. “Uh. Okay. A glimpse through an… what word is that? I’ve never seen it before.”

“Interstice,” Hermann says. “It’s an intervening space, like the courtyard between the dining hall and the library.”

He nods. “An interstice caught, of a crowd of workmen and drivers in a bar-room around the stove of a late winter night and I… un—unmark’d seated in a corner, of a youth who loves me and whom I love…” Newt glances up at Hermann for half a second, the sensation of his intense gaze near-unbearable. He feels his heart stumble in his chest, falling against his ribcage and knocking the breath out of his lungs. 

Hermann nods almost imperceptibly. “Yes?”

Newt blinks. “Uh. Right. Silently—silently approaching and seating himself near, that he may hold me by the hand…” He trails off again. 

“Newton?” Hermann asks gently, “Is something wrong?”

It didn’t begin this way. Hermann wasn’t a very good teacher at first: stubborn, demanding, quick to point out where Newt had gone wrong. It took a while for him to learn how to balance his instruction, how to alternate between suggestion and praise. Newt thinks he’s a better teacher than anyone else at Welton, or perhaps in all of America. Maybe it’s because he knows how difficult it is to overcome where your body betrays you. 

They began with basic reading for young children, then chapter books, until Hermann brought in a collection of poems to one lesson and instructed Newt to choose his favorites and read those. It was easier for him; the rhythm clicked better in his mind, somehow, and he preferred the variety to long works that droned on for pages about the main character’s penchant for prostitutes or gambling. There was love and care in these words, and he appreciated it.

“No,” says Newt quickly, “no, I’m fine.” He ducks his head to hide the way his cheeks burn. “This poem is, uh, kinda queer, Herms. Not that I care,” he says quickly, hearing a sharp intake of breath from next to him. “I don’t mind. It’s just, uh, y’know… not something I expected you to pick out.”

Hermann is silent, and after a few moments Newt turns to see him staring right at his face. Or rather, he realizes, his mouth. “Poetry is poetry,” Hermann says quietly, not moving his gaze. “It doesn’t matter who wrote it. It just matters what they have to say.”

Newt bites his lip the tiniest bit. “What do you think he’s saying, then?”

Hermann opens and closes his eyes slowly, like a cat. Newt feels almost crushed underneath his stare. “The same thing that all of them were. Neruda, and Wilde, and Byron. Let us live. Let us be. We are here and we love despite it all—despite _you_ all.” He pauses. “I don’t think there’s sin in that.”

The breath catches in Newt’s throat, and without thinking (and yet unable to stop his mind from whirring with what this means) he leans forward and lets his eyes slide shut. Hermann meets his lips with his own; soft, almost chaste, clumsy in a childish sort of way that’s hopelessly romantic. He brings a hand up to cup Newt’s jaw tenderly, sliding his thumb along where it meets his neck. His hands are cold. Newt finds he doesn’t mind at all.

He pulls back, panting, so hot he wonders if his clothes are going to melt off. Hermann’s pupils are blown wide with wonder, and he chases Newt’s lips before letting them go.

“Is this wrong?” Hermann asks in a whisper (because they both know that this is wonderful, yes, but secret and dangerous and somehow that makes it even more exciting). Newt smiles dazedly.

“I don’t know. It doesn’t feel so.” The smile grows wider. “Kiss me again to be sure?”

Hermann lets out a soft chuckle, his eyes crinkling up in a way that makes Newt’s chest go tight. “You’re a hedonist, Geiszler.”

“God no,” says Newt, “I’m in love. Can’t you tell?”

Hermann takes his request and moves in again, and Newt puts a hand on his knee (bruised from kneeling on the hard wooden floor for so long) to steady himself. Neruda, Hermann said. _If only you were to put your mouth to my heart, your delicate mouth, your teeth, if you were to put your tongue like a red arrow there where my dusty heart is beating_.

Newt fishes around and closes the book with his free hand. He doesn’t think there’ll be much more reading done tonight.


End file.
